I would suggest that your readers get on to the Singapore Straits Times website and read the report entitled 'Religious reign of terror in Basra'. It makes very, very disturbing reading - especially in the context of current developments.

Reporting from Basra, Iraq, the report said that Islamist militias in that city have 'begun imposing a harsh version of Syariah, or Islamic law, that has shocked many residents'.

Militiamen loyal to rebel Islamic cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, thought to number around 12,000, have 'spread everywhere in the city. Residents say that they are already hunting down unveiled girls, attacking liquor stores and clamping down on the local press'.

Some of them even visited the Basra Maternity and Paediatric Hospital to try to convince the hospital administrators 'to forbid male doctors from curing female patients'.

The report said: 'On the streets, fear is palpable. Three months ago, a female student from Basra University was ordered to cover her hair. She refused. Three days later, she was found dead'.

And there is more: 'Even picnics along the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway, where the Tigris River meets the Euphrates River, have become illicit acts. In a high-profile incident first publicised by Iraqi TV stations in Baghdad, Sadr's militiamen violently broke up a March 15 picnic attended by hundreds of engineering students beneath the palm trees of Al-Andalus Park.

'As the boys played volleyball and girls listened to music, black-clad men armed with assault rifles charged at them, firing shots into the air. Outraged students organised two large demonstrations and demanded an apology.

'But instead of meting out punishment to the militiamen, religious extremists began hunting down the protesting students, who said they were arrested and interrogated by Sadr militiamen in the weeks after the picnic'.

The report goes on to say: 'And clerics like Sheikh Al-Basri (the local representative of Sadr) are unapologetic. Sometimes, he says, violence is the only way to stop corruption. 'You should punish and beat a kid in order to protect him from playing with fire', he says in an interview'.

The report concludes thus: 'For Basra's old-timers who remember the city's golden age before Iraq's troubles, the violence and intolerance are heartbreaking. 'When I was a student, I went to the movies and casinos every weekend', says Ms Juliana Youssef Davoud, an English professor in her 50s. 'None of these little pleasures of the youth are now allowed in Iraq'.'

That is sobering stuff. Violence and intolerance in the name of Syariah in an Iraq which is supposed to develop under American auspices into something of a model of moderate Islamist governance.

It holds lessons for thoughtful people everywhere, and gives rise to fundamental questions as to where the line should be drawn in a modern, technologically advanced economy that is firmly and irrevocably plugged into the global network of commerce, technology, services and talent.

We see how Singapore has decided to develop two integrated resorts with casinos that, according to reports in the Singapore papers, will reap RM11 billion in investments, create 35,000 new jobs and give a RM3 billion boost to the Singapore economy annually.

All this so that Singapore can turn itself into a vibrant hub of Asia that is ahead of its regional competitors. How their plans co-exist with an increasingly conservative environment in Malaysia and Indonesia?

There are many, many hard questions out there. No one has come out with logical, well- researched and well-argued answers. It seems to me that we deserve much, much better than facile assurances that everything is going well - more so when fundamental cleavages in society are being exposed elsewhere.